"Child Eaters" at Thaumatrope.

My tweet-short, “Child Eaters,” was published by Thaumatrope. You can read all two lines of it by clicking here.

The story was actually spotlighted over on Fiction Daily. Hilarious though it may be, they reproduced only the first sentence. It becomes more John Cheever like this, don't you think?

Thanks to both Thaumatrope and Fiction Daily for the publication and spotlight.

Bathroom Monologue: Get Rid of #1

There is an audio edition of this monologue. Click on this text to download the MP3, or click the triangle on the left to listen.

I knew you’d ask me some day. Eventually he’d know too much. He was coddled, overpaid, overpraised, and inevitably became a liability. Now he needs to go. But how do we kill the world’s greatest hitman? The #1 hands-on murderer?

Here's how.

Set up a puppet company years in advance, slowly building its own identity so that it looks unconnected to us. This puppet company can do lots of things. Like backing Latin American coups. Like bribing domestic senators. Like running guns into Africa. Lots of things that build good reputation among bad people. If you're so pressed for time that you can't build up a puppet company right now, you can borrow mine. Just this once.

The puppet company hires #1 to go out and kill #2. The second greatest hitman. Mildly deranged and incredibly connected. There are few targets so difficult to find and so dangerous to pursue. #1 is lucky that #2 doesn’t know he’s coming.

We tell #2 the son of a bitch is on his way. We give him plenty of warning, and because we look completely unrelated to the evil puppet company that hired #1, we don’t look suspicious. #2 arms up, grateful to us and pissed at a guy he’s resented for years anyway.

Now if #1 does kill #2? Bonus. Because #2 was going to ascend to the top spot when we killed #1, and who wants that? He’s deranged. He overcharges. He’s got a cancerous ego. He would have become just as much a liability, and he fucked my daughter.

Now you say to me, "Broker, #2 might not kill #1 even with preparation. He’s not as good a killer – that’s why he’s #2."

That is why we reach out to save #2 from the evil puppet company. He’s done wetwork for us before and we declare, duplicitously, that we want him to live. While #1 is in the field, cut off from information unrelated to his target, we hire the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh top hitmen to chase down and kill #1 before he succeeds. Thusly #1 will have #2 lying in wait for him in Barbados, and five more killers chasing behind. With that many men on his tail, if he isn’t killed in the crossfire, he'll be strangled in an elevator or poisoned by complimentary hotel wine. He will not live to cash the puppet company's check.

#7 is given the proviso that if #2 survives, to kill him when no one’s looking. If he gets caught, we’ll blame it on tampering from the puppet company.

That last part is just a professional recommendation. Regardless, we’ll get rid of #1.

Bathroom Monologue: Bad Penny, Life Two

David waved the whole story off like a bad smell in the air.

“I can’t explain it.”

“Really?” the waitress asked, tilting her head at him. “Because you’ve spent the last hour doing something that sounded an awful lot like it, hon.”

“It’s ridiculous.” He laid his fists on the counter and hunched a little on his stool. “But when I close my eyes at night, I feel like that penny followed me.”

The waitress shook her head with a sad smile. “Something that beat up was probably destroyed by now.”

“There’s no proving it, though.”

“So you think it’s in your pocket change?”

“No.” He wanted to look up but his admission was too embarrassingly heavy to raise his head. “I check.”

She lowered until her face was level with the countertop, so that she could look David in the eyes. She was cute. Too plump to be traditionally pretty, but there was something spritely in her. Christ, she was saintly to put up with him complaining for so long. Slow day or not.

“Should I check the register?”

“That’s okay.”

“So you think this evil penny killed your dad and flunked you out of college? You think it has that much power?”

“I don’t think it. I just can’t unthink it.”

She got up and waltzed over to the cash register. It rang open and David heard her sift through the change. He inhaled and rolled his eyes at himself.

She returned with a penny. It had the brightness of new minting on it, not the evil thing he worried about.

“I don’t mean to drag you into my insanity.” He shook his head, because that was what you did when your face wanted to apologize along with your words. “Let’s…”

“Let’s make a new penny,” she said.

She kissed the penny and put it tails-down in front of David. Her pink lipstick stained Lincoln’s beard.

“This can be Casper. The good ghost penny.”

David snorted. He touched the penny with the edges of his index fingers, admiring the contrast of bright pink on bright zinc.

“How’s it going to stay on?” he asked. “Lipstick’s not permanent.”

“How?” She grinned. When she grinned, she showed her upper teeth. David liked that. “That’s up to you.”

Bathroom Monologue: Bad Penny, Life One

He knew it was a bad penny when he was twelve years old. It was the one penny he got in the sum of fourteen dollars and ninety-six cents. The old man pulled out a ten and a five. He deliberated, then shoved the five back in his pocket and produced four ones. Then three quarters, then two dimes, and finally that penny.

The penny had been minted in 1983, and yet looked older than God. It was dirt brown and oxidized with disgusting green in bits. One green bit ran across Lincoln's eyes like a gash, as though a second assassin had blinded the president.

Fourteen dollars and ninety-six cents, David pocketed, for a week's work with newspapers and milk deliveries. He brought it all home, and that was the night of the last fight. His father pealed out of the driveway at dusk and never came back.

The penny, and most of the other coins, fell under his bed. He dug them out a month later to spend on lunch. His mother said his father was supposed to pay for school lunches and wouldn't give him the money. His father said his mother was supposed to give him that money out of child support and so wouldn't cough it up.

He had a test and needed food in his system, so he spent some of his money, including that penny, on a bagel. He went heavy on the complimentary cream cheese. It didn't settle in his stomach. He ran out of History halfway through the period to vomit. He leaned over the toilet, holding his head, and could have sworn his fingers smelled of pennies.

Having only completed a third of the test, he failed.

Because his parents excelled at telling him the other should pay for anything he wanted, he asked a favor to secretly work in the back of the cafeteria during his free period. It got him free lunch, and a little money under the counter. His first "payment" was a fistful from the coin drawer. He didn't even realize the penny was back in his possession until he got out of gym, wiped sweat from his mouth, and smelled damnable pennies. An irrational urge made him check his jeans, and there was the blind Lincoln, now with a second oxidized green gash, this one across his mouth.

He got busted by the principal the next Monday for working in the cafeteria. That was not allowed. He was reprimanded. His father was called in to "discuss" things with the principal, the first time David's dad would have been in town when it wasn't his weekend.

David waited for him by the fountain. He threw the blind Lincoln in and wished his dad would not be a dick about this, maybe be moved by the story and cough up some lunch money.

A half an hour later his father still wasn't there. David went inside and waited another two hours to learn his father had been killed in a car crash.

Many bad things happened to David in his life. Many bad things happen to everyone. He had a rich grandfather who would have paid his entire way in the world, but he died the month before David was born, and died without a will. The government took everything, David got no fairy grandfather, and no blind Lincoln penny was involved. Not in any way you could prove.

That grandfather did have holdings in a zinc mine that provided much of the US Mint's metals for penny minting. David found that out when he tried too hard to connect things.

The penny left that fountain and was spent on sno-cone, at a stand that was robbed two weeks later, by a thief who died from snorting tainted cocaine. Eventually it reached the right bank and went into the system, where it was destroyed. The bank it had gone through went out of business a year later, unable to compete with the big franchise with better annual percentages on the same street. That was after the blind Lincoln left circulation, though.

David sketched a theory. He always threw it away when he was done, but always rewrote it later. He wondered on a big thing, because money isn't coinage or paper. It isn't before or after the decimal on a receipt. Money isn't corporeal. That's why so much banking jumped online. The government could destroy damaged bills, but not one cent left the economy. In fact with big banks and stock markets, more and more money kept coming to be. Not one cent was destroyed. It all just shifted into the ether and the ethernet.

So when he bombed at community college, he wondered about the blind Lincoln. When his girlfriend admitted the baby wasn’t his, he wondered and cursed himself. When the economy crashed, he knew it wasn’t the penny. And yet, for days afterwards he could smell it on his fingers.


Please come back tomorrow for the conclusion of Bad Penny.

"Exposure by Community" in a Contest

Exposure by Community was nominated for the #fridayflash essay contest. The contest is for essays on how writers are affected by hashtag groups like #fridayflash. Public voting is under way. You can read all seven nominated entries and vote for your favorite by clicking here.

If you have a few minutes, I'd deeply appreciate your support with a look and a vote. Thank you.

Visit the #fridayflash essay contest page here.

Bathroom Monologue: L’aughterlife (It’s French)

Contrary to conventional belief, there is comedy in Heaven. If you know anything about comedy, you know it happens on every cloud and metaphor. If, like most people, you know nothing about comedy and require comedians to build in pauses and punchlines for you to laugh at something, then the comedy scene in Heaven is zoned mostly to one building. It is notorious as the only building in the place that gets absolutely no respect. The angels didn’t understand why until Rodney Dangerfield died and became management.

Mr. Dangerfield does not often perform, preferring to book talent and hit on the winged waitresses. Last week Will Rogers did six nights. This week Richard Pryor is doing six, with Sam Kinison opening for five of them. On the sixth night George Carlin will open with an updated, more ironic version of his ‘there is no up there’ routine. Rogers, Pryor, Kinison and Carlin can only perform for six nights as on the seventh professional comedians rest.

Alternative acts show up on the seventh night. Jonathan Swift, Kurt Vonnegut, Erma Bombeck and numerous other authors who all secretly just wanted to tell jokes from a stage finally get the chance. Mark Twain does a killer set using a Samuel Clemens dummy. Sometimes luminaries from other disciplines come in to try out humor, like Homer and Beethoven's “see no evil, hear no evil” routine. And every seventh day, Dangerfield announces that God will be on later “if we have time.” He’s yet to perform.

You may have to be there to get that last one.

There is a lot of laughter at the club that gets no respect. There has to be, because there wasn’t enough on earth. Not the kind that’s worthwhile. When there is enough good humor on earth, the club will finally close down and the patrons will go watch. They’d like it to be soon, but some will admit they hope to get Bill Cosby before then.

"Hold Down the Fort" at Muskoka River

Today I have a story and interview over as Muskoka River.

This is one of the first times I've been interviewed. We covered the origin of the Bathroom Monologues, my writing habits, and some of my favorite American authors (guess how many are dead). I also asked my audience an important question that I'd sincerely like answers to. Cathy Oliffe did something very amusing with my answers that followers of the Bathroom Monologues should enjoy.

The story is "Hold Down the Fort." It plumbs that peculiar phrase and whips up an absurdist history to explain its existence. It features Davey Crockett, Paul Bunyan and anti-gravity pirates in zeppelins.

You can read both the interview and the story by clicking on this text here.

Bathroom Monologue: "How are you feeling?" -A well-meaning friend

"How am I feeling? I feel like going to bed until Sunday. At the crack of noon on the holy day I'll order a pizza. Delivery. I'll bribe the deliveryman to come into my house, upstairs, and to set the pizza on my mattress. No matter how heavy a tip he demands, I'll give it to him so long as he leaves the box open, so that I can roll over and gnaw at the pie at will. He'll depart, I'll eat what I assume is one and a half slices before falling asleep - hopefully not face down in cheese, but I make no promises. I'll sleep through Monday, and if Monday is dumb enough to poke through my light-blocking blinds, I will grab it about the throat and throttle it. I'll leave its remains in the pizza box and go back to bed. I will sleep so long and so thoroughly that princes will show up wondering if they're supposed to help wake me. Any who intrude will receive Monday-like throttling. I will only leave the bed once it is so soiled that I can't stand the smell - at which point I'll roll onto the floor and use the carpet as a blanket."

Bathroom Monologue: A Consumer Savage, OR, Taking a Swing at Arthur C. Clarke

Little Tommy yanked on his father’s sleeve in the direction of the boutique. It was so full of color and vibrating gadgets. Peacock feather wands in fanned displays, golden rods and splinters of dragon’s nails. There was a green wand shaped like a glowstick that lit up whenever Tommy looked at it. He didn’t know the shop owner was making it do that; he thought it was destiny.

“But I want a wand! Everybody has one!”

“No.” His father pulled the sleeve free. “You’re going to learn magic the right way.”

“It already does water and fire mancies. I bet it even raises dead animals. We'll save money on pets.” He stamped his sneakered feet. The heels blinked red, an overpriced feature in his father’s opinion. “You’ve got an iPad! What’s the big deal?”

His father turned his long, slender nose down on Little Tommy. He leaned down until the tip of his nose poked the boy's forehead.

“Thomas. Can you tell me the difference between a magic wand and an iPad?”

Little Tommy deliberated. He’d been furious with greed, but now had a dangerous question. If he answered this right, it might earn him a wand like the ones the McGillicuddy twins had.

“Is it the app store?”

His father shook that long nose in disappointment.

“That’s why you can’t have one. Youtube’s made you go stupid.” He seized Little Tommy’s wrist and pulled him from the boutique. "Any sufficiently whored out magic is indistinguishable from technology. Until you can tell them apart, you don’t get either. I’m not raising a consumer savage.”

Bathroom Monologue: Can the description of a painting be a story?

This goes out to everybody. The painting described below is not real. I imagined it. But I invite anyone who reads this to create what they see in the description. It can be a watercolor or oil painting. A sketch in charcoal, ink or pencil. You can draw stick figures in crayon. It can be a render, 3D image or ironic machinima screenshot. You can get your friends to pose for a reenactment photo. You can do whatever you like, omit any detail that gets in your way, so long as you send me a copy. E-mail it to bathroom.monologues@gmail.com. With your permission, I’ll post your work. You can opt for me to not publish it or to be published anonymously if you please. Otherwise I'll give your name, whatever you title your piece, and a link to your blog, art account, or whatever charity you’d like to endorse. If you know a friend who draws or does anything in the visual arts, please share this with them. Submissions deadline is August 1st.

We're where the river meets the docks. The brick harbor takes up the right half of the painting, while a steamship disembarks on the left. It’s just departed, only three feet away.

There are a few men visible on the edge of the boat. All are wearing olive trench coats with brass buttons. All but one are holding rifles. They hold them idly, clearly not shooting anything right now. They're headed off to war.

One man is unarmed. He is at the very edge, hands clasping the railing. He's leaning as far over the side as he can, pelvis pressed to the rail. He's leaning overboard to kiss someone. All the armed soldiers aboard are staring at him in amusement or disbelief.

There are lots of people on the brick harbor. Old men and women dressed in dirty shirts and peasant blouses, possibly the parents of these young soldiers who are going off to war. There are a few children, including one boy in a striped shirt carrying a toy gun. We don't look at any of them immediately. We look where they are looking, and they are looking at the woman who is standing on the edge of the harbor, on the balls of her bare feet. She is leaning across the water to kiss our leaning unarmed soldier.

She wears a pale violet dress, pale from being worn and washed so many times. She also wears a violet mod hat, darker than her dress. They probably don’t wash hats. A few strands of black hair are falling out from under the hat, but most is fixed underneath.

One of her hands is on the unarmed soldier's helmet. He's the only one wearing a helmet. In fact, by the way she's fingering its straps, it looks like she's leaned out over the water to put the helmet on this lucky young man. And since they were both leaning out, faces forward, there was nothing else to do but kiss.

The second this ceases to be a painting and becomes life, both of them will fall into the river. That is how far out they lean. From what we see of their faces, they do not seem to think that far ahead. Their eyes are closed.

His hair is brown, where the helmet doesn't cover it.

Bathroom Monologue: Troll Park

"You’ve been looking for work for weeks now, so I’m going to offer this. I don’t normally because people are scared of the work. You’ll have to be around trolls. They’re nowhere as dangerous as society would have you think, though. It’s mostly bigotry and rare bad apples that spoil their image. Trolls aren’t evil. Mostly, they just want food, companionship and moisture. You’ll be providing the last of those items. Down on the other side of town is a defunct water park that some guys are starting back up. The equipment is substandard for human and dwarfish use, but trolls are tougher. Trolls will pay a lot to stay moist; the sunlight dries them out and turns them into statues, but floating in a pool or going down a slide, they’re slick and safe. Slick, safe and quite messy. That’s where you’ll come in. The rides all need janitors to keep spare troll mud from building up too much and clogging the filters and gears. You’ll probably start by reinforcing the water slides for the weight of their new customers, but they’ll need you for a hundred gigs. We’re talking eight-to-fourteen hour days at almost a living wage. Just stay out of the food court so the slower trolls don’t mistake you for goods."

Bathroom Monologue: “If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

“Jim, did you hear that?”

“That’s kind of insane.”

“We’ve got to start killing people.”

“Why?”

“We’ll say that we’ve discovered that we will die for killing people.”

“I don’t think that’s Dr. King’s message.”

“His message is that if you haven’t found something you’ll die for then you shouldn’t be alive. There are millions of people who wouldn’t die for anything; they wouldn’t even donate ten bucks to save a starving kid. The government’s going to start killing unmotivated people any day now. When they do, they’ll need us.”

“…People who live to kill.”

“Exactly! We’ll live to kill. It’ll keep us employed and safe from nuts like Dr. King who want to butcher all the slackers.”

“I still don’t think that’s his message.”

“Fine. Be a skeptic. But help me fill out these forms.”

Bathroom Monologue: Remake Story

Catatonia is remake. They can call it a reimagining, but it's the same title, same main characters, and it's still about a child molester who contemplates philosophy in dreams. I think if you keep the philosophical child abuser who walks in other people’s sleep, you’re not re-imagining too hard. It’s a remake.

The original Catatonia was released in 1971. It was kind of grind house, kind of art house. The stuff he makes his victims dream is really graphic and disturbing, but it wasn’t scary. It was like porn, except bad things instead of sexy things. It opens in this one scene about a school bus driving through a graveyard, and all the kids are buried under their seats, then wake up and try to claw their way out of the vinyl before they suffocate. The sleepwalker watches from the driver’s seat, talking about nihilism. Unsettling stuff. When it first came out critics said only a perverted American could make. They implored people to go see better films from Europe.

Which is funny because the 1971 Catatonia was actually a remake of Au-dessous de Votre Lit, a 1960 French film. It opens with kids trying to claw their way out from within the seats of a car before the suffocate while the driver reads from Camus’s The Stranger. It, too, was about a master of dreams fascinated with doing terrible things to kids. Claude and John in Catatonia seem funny once you see Au-dessous de Votre Lit’s child protagonists: Claude and Jean. They dispatch their stalker the same way as in Catatonia, tripping him and impaling him on broken pieces of a crib (though in the French version it’s the crib he’d made for his son, who was stillborn; in the American it’s a random crib). The directors of Catatonia didn’t even acknowledge Au-dessous de Votre Lit.

Before you get angry at America, though, it’s worth noting that Au-dessous de Votre Lit was also a plagiarism. There was no film like it beforehand. However, there was Himmel Nabel, a Swiss novel by Hans Kohler that was widely circulated in the 1910’s largely about two German boys who are haunted in dreams by a foreign soldier their fathers have killed in the Great War. He tortures them for what their fathers are doing. In an unusually surreal scene for Horror lit at the time, they have to dig themselves out of his unmarked grave, which has no tombstone, but instead the military tank that blew him up parked on top of it.

Monologue for a male theologian who is somehow hired to do the commencement speech for an all-girls college

Thank you for inviting me. I’m not sure exactly why you invited me; perhaps “Jens” sounds feminine to American ears.

Uhm. Yes.

Well, I’ve always felt Christianity had more feminism to it than churches let on. I think they were intimidated. I grew up Irish Catholic and there was no stronger force in the world than my mother. My father was a distant second place. The local priest, somewhere in third. Sometimes she would even speak up during services, if she disagreed with the theme. One Sunday she and the priest got into such an argument over whether or not God could make a rock that He Himself could not lift that the services ended before the matter was resolved.

I hope that won’t happen today. It may be why I’m so nervous.

There is a lot of chauvinism in the business. The savior is male. All four gospels are from men, and institutions like the Catholic Church and Russian Orthodox Church are dominated by men. The sexless almighty entity is for some reason called “He.” My mother never liked that. As I said, though, a lot of Christianity doesn’t want to let on that there’s feminism to it.

After the savior, the most important person in that religion’s history is a woman. The Virgin Mary. It’s funny – “virgin” used to mean “mother,” not “chaste.” They called her the Virgin Mary because she was the most famous mom in the world, not because she and Joseph never fooled around. In their time motherhood was revered.

She wasn’t a divine surrogate, either. Imagine explaining to your future husband, should you marry, that you are pregnant with a celestial child. It takes a heck of a woman to sell that. After the birth, Joseph fades out of the picture and Mary remains. She informs Jesus of his divinity; depending on the gospel, he isn’t born knowing. When they’re at a party and he’s afraid to work miracles, it’s Mary who tells God it’s time to be a man and make the wine. Show me any scripture where an apostle tells Christ what to do.

The biggest mistake in Christian history was not having her write part of the Bible. Imagine that story. Imagine the nativity scene from her perspective. And watching the savior grow up? Was God a little angel? How was puberty? She was with him to his death. Literature has no greater loss than not hearing the thoughts of the holy mother who outlived her son.

None of that is to say your only role is to have children. Mary Magdalene convinced Christ to raise her brother, Lazarus. Mother Theresa built houses for the sick. If you believe the story of Joan of Arc, compare her to the Christian founder Paul. God tells Paul to quit being an ass and put his sword away, while he tells Joan to stand up. She fought an entire country. I sometimes wonder why you don’t just take the whole planet over.

I didn’t speak about Mary because she was a mother. It’s because you’re going into the world next week. The world that pays you less than men on average, has far more men in positions of power, and calls the sexless almighty “He.”

You’re well educated. I know because I’m friends with the Dean of Studies, and she’s smarter than I am. You can stand up. You’re ready. You don’t have to take a thing from this world; you can march into it with the confidence of the lady who can talk her husband into accepting immaculate conception and tell a little god what to do. It’s confidence that’s your birthright, which you’ll back up with ability built through effort.

I’m not just saying this because my mother went to this college and is sitting in the third row (hi Mom). I’m saying it because I don’t really know why I’m here, but if I’m going to be, I have things to impart. The most important is this: write and remember what is important in the years ahead, and teach it all to the world. We need the education.

Bathroom Monologue: Gooseless

There is a biological peculiarity that causes some people to shudder without reasonable cause. They don't do it in revulsion, or reaction to abnormal temperature, or because they're sick. A superstition holds that these fol shudder because a goose just walked over wherever they're going to be buried. Most folk have heard this superstition, but some act perplexed by it, never having had such an irrational shudder. These folk are to be pitied, not only for their lack of culture, but because they may be doomed to die at sea or in a horrific plane explosion. Keep them on land at all costs until they produce such a shudder. The goose-walking superstition provides a valuable resource, confirming who will die in such a way that they can be buried. The gooseless are in desperate need of watching.

Bathroom Monologue: The More Dangerous Game

The pilot signaled to Mr. Weiss and started the engine. The helicopter’s blades whooped to life above their cabin. As they lifted off, Mr. Weiss climbed into the back and squeezed his wife’s knee.

“Honey, you can take off the blindfold now. Happy anniversary.”

“I’m not taking it off, Howard.”

“Why? You have to see what I got you.”

She remained stolid, as though sitting on a particularly unpleasant icicle.

“No, I don’t.”

Mr. Weiss eyed her as though she could see through the blindfold. He wondered sometimes.

“I promise you’ll like it.”

“I promise I won’t. We’re in a helicopter over international waters. Again. You’re taking me hunting. Again.”

“We’re hunting the most dangerous game!”

Mrs. Weiss lolled her head back and groaned.

“The two times we hunted human beings weren’t enough for you, Howard? They aren’t that dangerous. We get high-powered rifles and they get drugged by prostitutes and dropped off in a strange land. I’m not taking off the blindfold and I’m not setting foot outside this helicopter. If you want them so bad you can make our anniversary like every other night of the year and go play with yourself.”

He waited for her to be done. She had to be done for maximum enjoyment.

“We’re not hunting humans this year," he said, leaning towards her. "You were right. They’re not very dangerous except under very specific circumstances.”

“I don’t want to hunt a human whose daughter you kidnapped either, Howard. I saw that brochure in your bag.”

“We’re not doing that. They got bad reviews on their website. Besides, it turns out humans are not even on the top twenty-five most dangerous games.”

She shifted, as though her icicle had melted a little with curiosity.

Seeing her shift, he reached over her armrest and stroked her wrist. “For instance, number fourteen is hunting a bear.”

“Bears aren’t that dangerous. I have a basement full of them.”

“They are when you don’t use a gun.”

She licked her lips.

“Number seven is a great white shark, hunted from a rowboat with two paddles and a bowie knife. Number four has to do with some chimpanzees they’ve taught to wield samurai swords.” He moved in close enough to breath on her neck. That worked sometimes. “Bet you wish you’d seen this brochure.”

“What are we hunting, Howard?”

“Number one.”

Her posture was nearly defrosted now. She asked, “What’s number one?”

“You’ll find out when you take off the blindfold.”

She inhaled slowly, nostrils splayed.

“No, I’m leaving it on.”

Howard slapped the armrest in frustration.

“Why?”

She reached over for his knee. Her fingers slid up until he pressed back into his chair. Then she squeezed.

“My present will be more fun that way. Happy anniversary, Howard.”

Bathroom Monologue: Port Noy's Complaint

The harbormaster’s door flew open. A sailor burst through it, eyes frantically scraping over the room. The harbormaster peered in from the back room.

"Harbormaster!” the sailor cried. “Harbormaster!"

The harbormaster came in, eyeing the sailor. "What is it?"

"The Port Noy’s come alive!"

He blinked at the sailor. "Is there a riot?"

"No, the actual structure is up and attacking the ships. It’s a nightmare out there.”

The sailor waved him over to the door. They looked outside together. True to the sailor’s words, the docks had ripped from the waters and were moving like great wooden tentacles. They slapped at ships and flung men into the sea.

The sailor jerked on the harbormaster’s lapel. “It demands you come listen to its complaint."

“That I listen to… Port Noy’s complaint?” The harbormaster stared at the monstrosity, then rolled his eyes and walked back indoors. "Oh this is too dumb, even for Wiswell."

Help for Jemma and Shelly

Today’s story is about two people. It’s about Jemma and Shelly, the best couple I’ve ever met. They’ve outlasted every romance I’ve ever had, and every romance any friend of mine has ever had. They’re in a rough period and I’m going to ask you for a little help. But first, how I know them.



They met at college. Perhaps unsurprising, it was a Liberal Arts college. Jemma was a Quaker from Virginia, while Shelly was a northerner with a strange affinity for Chinese literature. Shelly didn’t even know she was gay when they met. When I met them, they were already inseparable friends. Sometimes they would eat lunch and dinner at my table, called the Long Table because our group of friends grew too big and we had to push two normal tables together to fit everyone. It was one of the most important settings of my life because everything was open to a friendly humor. Comparative religion, blowjobs gone wrong, Bush winning a second term – everything conveyed in the humor of acceptance, which I have pursued in my writing ever since.

It’s in that spirit that I say, if they didn’t know they were in love, I did. And this is from a very oblivious man. A gay professor once told me about stalking his boyfriend and I came away from it oblivious that he was gay. I could tell about Jemma and Shelly not because of social stereotypes, but just how they were to each other. They were so bonded, so warm, and arrived together so frequently, that I just assumed they were a couple. Sorry if I beat you to the realization, ladies.

They have been two of my dearest friends for years. They are often the first to see my newest short stories. My half-crippled body made a very rare trek across country to be at their wedding (there’s a photo somewhere of me trying to lift the two of them for a hug in their wedding dresses). When my family went so broke we couldn’t afford groceries, they found a local grocery store online and ordered a delivery for me. The night before my gallbladder surgery they were so worried that I had to call them to calm them down. A week later, when I was finally able to sit up at the computer again, the first thing I saw on GMail was Shelly’s status: “Missing John.”

They live in Virginia. Both worked at the same employer, which I won’t name because I don’t want to get my friends in trouble. Jemma mostly worked in the library and records, while Shelly was on the tech side.

In the last year Jemma became very ill. Her energy and appetite were sapped, so that many days she could barely get out of bed. On her good days a simple surprise like a door slamming would shock her and put her right back in bed. In addition, Jemma’s arms became incredibly tender, such that she couldn’t type on a computer, let alone stock bookshelves. She underwent a battery of tests, but the best her doctors came up with was that this condition was similar to Chronic Fatigue. Seeking treatment for an unknown disease has been arduous. Seeking it while fighting a torrent of paperwork from her disgruntled employers on made it worse.

Shelly took extra jobs to make up the slack. She helped a novelist with computer problems and took care of people’s pets. When she came down with Lyme’s Disease, she had to soldier through it. When she fell on the campus steps and hurt her knee, she limped through it. She had to work.

Last week they fired Shelly. It had nothing to do with her performance; they were “eliminating her position.” That was odd since she was one of two people responsible for a great number of services in the department, and the other woman is quitting before the Fall term. Who will pick up their work, they didn’t say.

So right now these two are out of work. They’ll lose their health insurance when they need it the most and they’re wading through a historically bad job market. That’s where we come in.

Today I’m putting a banner at the top of this site. It links to a Pledgie drive to help Jemma and Shelly. I encourage everyone to visit the page. Spread the banner wherever you like. If you can spare a few dollars, please consider contributing. Your donations will go to keeping the lights on and getting them to the doctor in a very rough period. They are not going to coast on your generosity; I know them, and as soon as they can do anything, they will. But we can help them in the mean time.

You can leave comments for them on this post. You can also reach the Pledgie page by click here.

Thank you.

Bathroom Monologue: Lame Parrot

"She's a lame parrot, I'll give you that. Malformed, with teeth instead of a beak and feathers so small and fine they feel almost like fur. It must be hard on her, utterly flightless, unable to join any flocks or fly south or whatever it is that other parrots do at the park. All she does when I take her out is run away from dogs. Disgusting thing, she'll just as soon hunt down a mouse as eat her seed. Sometimes I wonder why I keep her, but then I hold her in my lap, look down into those slitted eyes, and just know she's the sweetest parrot in all creation. An utter idiot, though. I said 'Meow' in front of her three years ago and now it's all she'll repeat."

Bathroom Monologue: Necessity, the Harlot

Necessity is the mother of Invention. Invention has many fathers because Necessity is a harlot, and one who often gives birth too late. I once saw her in a fine coffee shop. She was at the table of this German general. She’d excuse herself to the ladies room, then trot across and sit at the French general’s table. Seems they both had the necessity for killing each other and so desperately wanted to father her child they never looked up to see she was cheating on them. Like with the war, Necessity flirted out and left both generals with the bill for her cappuccino. That’s how she is. Necessity has no vested interest beyond fucking you. If an invention pops out of her, she doesn’t care. She necessitated the invention of epidural anesthesia years ago and hasn’t felt a thing since. It’s you who feels it. In the coffee shop case the Invention she squeezed out was a gun that shot a little faster. It had a mixed French and German accent.

Left Brain, Right Brain, No Brain, Whole Brain

A month ago I saw a peculiar chart from Dan Eden. It was posted on a writer's self-help blog, which was attempting to get writers to reflect on how we think and how such scrutiny might help us escape writer’s block. I loved the sentiment, but got stuck on the chart. I stared at it for longer than I spent reading the article. Eden had divided functions of “left-brained people” from those of “right-brained people,” suggesting you were more of one or the other.



Logical on one side, feeling on the other. It makes sense if you think about it for two seconds. My problem was thinking about it for three. Not only does most contemporary neuroscience suggest longterm lefty/righty dominance is woeful oversimplification, but the processes on the chart were far too cooperative - often they either cause each other or are actually different terms for processes on the opposite side. After three minutes, I opened MSPaint to work some things out. It went like this.

“math and science” and “philosophy & religion” are on opposite sides. In our modern world we like to pretend that these two tag teams are always at odds. But if that were the case, then how did Sir Isaac Newton, father of Calculas, inertia and gravity, spend so much time writing theology? How could Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk, systematically demonstrate and invent hereditary theory with his pea plants? These thinkers seemed to have both halves of the brain quite active. Travel further back in time and you find Philosophy is where Science began (at least in Europe); the sciences were considered part of fundamental philosophical education in Aristotle’s day. Even today our ideas of epistemology, which underlie all scientific inquiry, come from philosophy of what is knowable. To perform any science is to engage in a philosophy of knowledge.

There are other curious divisions. “math and science” are on one side while “symbols and images” are on the other. Except Mathematics are entirely represented by symbols: the plus sign, the division marker, and the entire numerical alphabet (1, 2, 3 – these are all symbols). In fact most mathematics are imaginary – not just the field of “imaginary numbers,” but advanced mathematics can’t be physically demonstrated. In the philosophical scientific field of Positivism, Positivists invented an easy-out by saying some things were just true without empirical demonstration in order to keep Mathematics in their otherwise observation-based system. Not only did early Positivists grapple with “math and science” being at odds, but they showed traits like “imagination rules” and “presents possibilities” would be essential on the other side of the left/right brain line.

“knows object function” is also on the other side from “math and science.” The physical sciences, from molecular chemistry to physiology to astrophysics, are all about knowing the properties and functions of things. Separating knowing what a thing does from the fundamental exploration of what things do is downright silly.

But let’s not throw away the chart just because of a few inconsistencies. Let’s draw lines where one item from one side might connect to the other.



That’s not so bad. After all, science explores the physical world, and you’ve got to have some of the right brain rooted in it. But we missed that “philosophy & religion” might have implications on the other side, too.

For instance, “knowing” is on the left side. Well we already said that epistemology is the philosophy of what we can know. Science and epistemological philosophy are intrinsically linked in their focus on reality – but “reality based” thought is also intrinsically linked to them. “uses logic” being on the opposite side from philosophy is also ridiculous; philosophy without logic is like legos without bricks. Similarly, “practical thinking” is encompassed in the philosophy of pragmatism, so a practical thinker might well be a right-brain-thinking philosopher. The “Chicago Club” certainly thought so.

“present and past” is on the left brain side. Religion, despite hosting prophecies, is largely about precedents and past. Jesus and Mohammed lived a long time ago and billions of people reflect on them. Holy scriptures require people to think about what should be modernized and what should remain true from back then. You can’t get anywhere in theology without studying the past luminaries. And once you get into comparative religion and religious anthropology, it’s largely past-centric thinking.

Come to think of it, “math and science” should be linked to “present and future” thinking. Science is often validated based on its predictions of future conditions. That whole “hypothesis” thing? Scientific thinking sets up experiments predicting what will happened based on what we know now.

So let’s fix those.



"philosophy & religion" still bothers me. With their codes and ways of seeing the world, major religions are essentially series of strategies for dealing with life. Forming and testing dogma is strategic thinking. These strategies make many followers feel safe, whether in that their lives have meaning, they’re doing the right things, or that death will not be the end of them. So “forms strategies” and “safe” are really qualities that are intrinsic to a lot of religious thinking. They’re part of perceiving patterns and applying order – but wait, “order/pattern perception” is also on the other side from "philosophy & religion." We’ll connect all those after the next paragraph.

As we’re considering ways of viewing life and everything, you can’t help but notice “ “big picture” oriented ” is on the right brain side. We often relegate "the big picture" to religion, but physicists who probe how many dimensions the universe has, where it all came from, and how everything works, are just as invested in the big picture. I’ll connect them now. Sorry for the delay, physicists.



Science and religion are giant concepts. Of course they overlap. We should step away from them, but there's one more connection that really deserves a look.

“knowing” and "believes” are supposed to be opposite traits on the chart. We like to say that you just believe something while I know the truth, but what is knowing? It’s believing in something that happens to be true. There’s not a great deal of neuroscientific difference between someone thinking he knows a thing and someone believing a thing. It’s the same experience to the knower or believer – the difference lies in the physical world, where a belief is found to be true or false. Inside the head, the formation of assumptions, ability to doubt and severity of conviction is the same. Validating a belief with evidence is scientific, but do I have to explain epistemology again? The “knowing” and “believes” division is downright improper labeling for brain activity. To be fair, we’ll connect this to “math and science” and “philosophy & religion” with a special paradoxical purple line.



“words and language” is a big one to hang out on its own. Language is our major form of communication. It’s odd that it would appear in the left-brain with all the stuffy logical thinking when it’s vital to the humanities.

If you’re thinking about “words and language,” then you must be thinking about their functions. We unconsciously process the functions of thousands of words and grammatical structures every day. You’re bound to reflect on them as you struggle for the right word, or rephrase something you said improperly. If you’re like me, you’re thinking about words and language every few minutes. Consciously as well as unconsciously, though, “words and language” are intrinsically connected to the trait of “knows object function.”

Think of all the illuminated language used in religion. The King James Bible and Paradise Lost are considered two of the most beautiful works in the English language, and they took considerable literary thought. Similarly, think of all the sharp philosophical quotes you’ve heard, or the rigorous rhetoric of major philosophical texts – a lot of philosophers were clearly interested or attuned to thinking in language. If you believe in revelation of any scripture, then you believe these impulses can be tied to “words and language.” And if you don’t? It might be because you’ve read a skeptic who was particularly attuned with his own words and language.

One attraction of great books is that they make us feel so much. I once had a wild argument with an entire college class over whether William Shakespeare was a great literary thinker, or (in their opinion) a shrewd observer of the human condition. I lost. Even I’ll admit I was half-wrong: the guy could spin a rhyme, meter and quotable line better than almost anyone in English history, but he used it to capture and evoke feeling. That’s because, like a lot of people who use “words and language,” he was also the kind who “uses feeling.” And while I don’t care for his Sonnets as much as my Lit. professors wanted me to, I recognize that the use of feeling is intrinsic to the entire field of poetry.

If people who think deeply in “words and language” can use feeling, what about impetuous writers? From ludicrous puns to the brash literary risks of Norman Mailer and William Burroughs, “words and language” liberate us and make us impetuous. “impetuous” is on the other side from “words and language,” right above “risk taking.” Every year critics praise some author for taking risks. Do you want to bet all of those authors entered the risk-taking zone free of literary thought? These things can clearly be connected in cognition.

Across the chart from “words and language” is the item of “symbols and images.” That’s a weird opposition. All the letters that make up words are symbols. Go back in history and you find cultures like that of Egypt using hieroglyphics – pictures that conveyed what we use words for. In fact, our ability to process the sounds that make up words is also the result of a symbolic process – one that attaches meaning to noise.



We’re not done with “words and language.” As a writer, I think about how “words and language” affect my mind every day. I’m also a Fantasy writer. A great deal of fantasy-based thinking comes across on the page, where you experiment with ideas and invent new realities. It offends me to see “fantasy based” thought on the other side from “words and language.” Conan, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter – all results of literary fantastic thought. And that’s because imagination can rule on the page – but “imagination rules” is on the other side from “words and language.”

I appreciate Conan, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. I appreciate some more than others, but the appreciation of words and language (and what they convey) is a basic human trait. Certainly an artistic trait. So “appreciates” also doesn’t seem right unconnected to “words and language.”

A little more Fantasy. You know, J.R.R. Tolkien spent years building his Middle Earth. He was distinctly “big picture” oriented in its construction. Nowadays that kind of “big picture” world-building is the stuff of workshops and fandom in popular fantastic fiction. The biggest Fantasy nerds want to know how your fictional world works. If you’d prefer me to be more reality-based, why, just writing my thoughts about this chart have helped me think about the big picture of mental life. “words and language” is so getting connected to “ “big picture” oriented.”

Come to think of it, I’ve been using “words and language” to “present possibilities” to you. Writing, or thinking about writing, or thinking while writing – these are ways I generate possibilities, problems and solutions. I'm doing it right now.



I should back away from “words and language.” A writer has a lot of cross-thinking going on with that trait.

You know what I haven’t paid enough attention to? “uses logic.”

I understand the schism between logic and feeling. Reason and intuition. Even if our brains are wired to make logical connections unconsciously, going off the handle and going by the book are different. I’m not going to connect them impulsively.

But how the heck can you study the “big picture” without logic? Sure you can feel it, but it’s the use of logic that helps us analyze big systems like quantum physics and sociology. That’s as silly as saying logic isn’t used in determining or classifying the function of an object. Unfortunately, the chart says that too. We’ll fix it in a moment.

We see “symbols and images” way over on the right side because we figure those are tools of art. But “words and language” are on the opposite side. We’ve already discussed how this is nonsense. Languages are logical, and any use of them requires the exercise of logical thought. Grammars are the logic of symbolic systems.

“present and future?” Now wait a minute. All those scientific hypotheses about what will happen in the future based on what’s happening now are the attempts to extend logic beyond the empirically observable. Aside from gut feelings and thunderous revelation from the heavens, our thoughts of the future are immutably tied to attempts at constructive logical thought.

We’ve tied “knowing” and “believes” because they’re intrinsically related thought processes. Surely there are scientists pissed at me for that. We like to associate knowledge with certainty and accumulated evidence. Yet belief doesn’t always spring out of nowhere. You read the evidence for global warming and come to believe in it; empiricism and logic were at work. Sometimes it’s bad logic at work: my mother believes the cream on the Home Shopping Network will remove her wrinkles because they showed her what they claimed to be examples of success. That was the evidence; and thus my Mom believed it and got her credit card. It’s a logical process, if often a flawed one. Logic shows up at some stage of belief all the time.

Most forms of criticism try to construct artificial systems by which we’ll judge things. Literary critic James Wood is happy to tell you “How Fiction Works” – it’s even the title of one of his books. Literary critics have their logics and rationalizations for literature. There are similar logical and pseudo-logical standards across the arts, all entwined in appreciation. I’ve even been in arguments with people who had strict critical dogmas for pro wrestling matches. So “uses logic” may often pop up in “appreciates,” perhaps even more often than in “acknowledges.”



You might tell me logic and fantasy are opposed. I’ll then tell you that logic helps people make stuff up all the time – that’s why “uses logic” and “math and science” are on the same side. Logic helps scientists invent theories that are yet to be validated, and helps mathematicians come up with things they can only prove on paper. The best liars are those who can think up something logical enough that you won’t question it. Logic even helps Fantasy authors think through their invented worlds.

Sometimes a Fantasy writer has to think practically. We’ll name our made-up things to keep track of them. It’d be too hard otherwise - but wait, “knows object name” and “practical” are on the wrong sides. Even the craziest fantastic thinkers need to acknowledge reality, either in finding ways to reject it, or accommodate some form of realism.



Crap, I forgot “acknowledges.” We’ll need to deal with that. Acknowledging rather than engaging and appreciating in some way is a huge part of the human condition. We recognize it without obsessing – it’s what keeps you from writing essays about charts. It’s so vital a feature that I feel like we’re about to add some lines.

You’d think “acknowledges” would live on its own. But when you’re feeling something, the ability to acknowledge but not engage contrary information helps preserve those dominant feelings. It’s the same when you’re flying through a book – you’re mostly acknowledging the logical and symbolic structures of the language, processing them unconsciously. That’s how imagination can rule, by touching on reality without grounding too much in it. This actually happens in a lot of disciplines, allowing chemists to remain on chemistry rather than getting caught up in unfamiliar biology – but also allowing you to focus on your beliefs and just acknowledge other religions, or to gloss over philosophies irrelevant to your current thinking.

A little more semantic, but if you’re only thinking about the present and future, then you’re more likely to only acknowledge the past rather than strongly consider it. That’s rare since most people contextualize all three periods of time, but it’s unavoidable when you’re isolating just two.

A similar division is essential in “getting it.” Just feeling the meaning, grasping the essence of the situation rather than processing all its details, requires you to be able to acknowledge and buffer yourself from those details. Otherwise, you’d have to “comprehend” everything.

Spatial perception has largely been on its own for this exercise. But at last, it’s got a friend. You see, spatial perception is largely unconscious. We all have it and we need it to stay under the surface. By barely conscious processes acknowledging objects in space, we’re able to relative their distances. Acknowledgment is essential to spatial perception.

“knows object function” actually helps the behavior of someone who “acknowledges.” Once you know what a thing does, you can acknowledge it much more easily and act around it or with it without much thought. That’s where driving reflexes come from; you know what the wheel, break and gas pedals do, acknowledge them and use them entirely unconsciously minutes into the trip. It’s similar to the role of acknowledgement in taking risks, because if you’re thinking about or are compelled to take risks, then you’re likely to only acknowledge the things you’re likely to lose rather than get bogged down comprehending potential loss. That sort of reflection usually pops up after you’ve acknowledged and risked the thing.



Let’s bat a little clean up with some brown lines.

-Since when was a “practical” person someone who didn’t think about the “future?” Almost every time I’ve ever been told to think practically, I was being told to think about the ramifications for my future. These two traits are obviously connected.

-Science Fiction is often what happens when a “fantasy based” thinker lets “facts rule.” There’s even a sub-genre called “Hard Science Fiction” for SciFi that is more bound in plausible reality.

-Paintings are images and plenty of painters have obsessed over details in their work. It’s easy to find a “symbols and images” thinker who is “detail oriented” in any community college art class.

-Images, especially in our age of HD photography and video, often represent the world. That’s why there are so many science-based TV channels. So “symbols and images” thinking can easily be connected both the “math and science” and to “fact rule”-based thought.

-We often think about being logical to keep us safe, but the feeling of safety is… you guessed it… a feeling.

-Trying to preserve your safety often results in considering multiple possibilities to find the safest option.

-Often we learn about things, like hazardous properties of chemicals, in order to keep ourselves safe. There is even a field of “safety education.” So “safe” and “knows object function” often overlap.

-Ignoring the big picture and only reacting to the details in front of you is impetuous. Detail-oriented thinking can thus be impetuous thinking.



I’m tempted to go into just how many functions of the right brain are “reality based,” or how many rely upon or relate to “order/pattern perception,” but I’ve run out of colors. The number of ways reflection on the past or predictions of the future factor into every other kind of thought might need their own spectrum.

I didn’t expose my terrible MSPaint skills for nothing. I did it because things like this chart are obscene oversimplifications of the human mind. Our brain hemispheres process together. They rely on highly specialized areas like the cerebral cortex and hypothalamus, chemicals like dopamine and seratonin, processing many more kinds of intelligence than “right” and “left,” as well as relying on the chemistry of the rest of your body. If you seriously reflect on that chart you will know that you possess at least one strong trait from either side and that the sides are hardly divorced. They compliment and often actually cause each other. It is a tepid generalization to say that just because the right half of the brain fired more during an exercise related to Trait X that this trait is always in that half.

Like any powerful dualism, I see the truths that the right/left oversimplification is based upon. You may find you have more strong traits on one side. And I’m not saying the things on the left don’t go together. I can see how every one of the left traits would correspond and overlap. The same goes for the traits on the right. Like any powerful dualism, there are truths that made people oversimplify things into this. I’m supportive enough to do this:



Those items are connected. Logic, facts and science are intimate with each other; so are imagination, fantasy and feeling. Yet in most minds there are multitudes of connections across the black/white left/right barrier. It would be wretched if such theories made you think you were only half of a chart that makes up a whole human being.

Bathroom Monologue: Life, the Universe, and the End of Everything

There is an equation that will end the universe. The architects of everything did their best to make it incomprehensible, hiding knowledge from minds that might string too much of it together. If it all came together, if someone knew the whole equation, the universe would be solved and end. We weren't endangered by it until recent centuries, with discoveries in physics and chemistry. Gradually we knew more about the materials that go into everything and how they behave - the parameters of the equation. A few decades ago one man found the answer to the equation. He posed it as a joke, not knowing how serious a threat knowing "42" was to us all. Now we know what the equation is supposed to equal, and eventually enough people will know enough figures of the universe that they'll line it all up. Then it will all equal 42 and everything will collapse. That joker said the universe would go away and be replaced by something more incomprehensible. I think that's wishful thinking.

Sologamous at Untied Shoelaces

Today's story is "Sologamous," which is up over at Untied Shoelaces of the Mind. You can read it by clicking on this link. Untied Shoelaces also has story ranking, so I'd appreciate if you could give me a positive vote.

"Sologamous" is about a man with an unusual marriage request: he wants to marry himself.

Untied Shoelaces of the Mind is a new market for prose. They look for Fantasy, Sci Fi and humor as well as mainstream fiction and non-fiction. They're a semi-pro paying venue, so I recommend my fellow writers check them out.

You can read John Wiswell's "Sologamous" by clicking on this highlighted text.

Inside the Creative Process (and a cave)

Watching M*A*S*H during my mid-day exercise routine, I watched Alan Alda’s Hawkeye dealing with a classic case of TV claustrophobia. He’s got to go inside a cave for shelter from bombing. It works out semi-heroically and is a smashing episode, as well as a smashing way to get my mind off the excruciation of exercise on my syndrome-ridden body.

On the elliptical, I imagine what kind of cave story I could tell. How exactly does claustrophobia work? What are the symptoms of an aggrieved sufferer?

As I lie in the tub afterwards, soaking my muscles, I imagine why a claustrophobe might go down there. His friend, Alan, becomes the reason. Alan is a dick. Some synapse in my head connects “dick” to “Alan” – the best I can figure is because Alan Moore has written his fair share of dicks. This Alan wants to go into the cave and our protagonist is forced to follow.

It’s night before I can concentrate again. The pain subsides enough, the brain fog lifts enough, to work.

It’s dark out. I draw the curtains anyway. Off goes the overhead light. A lamp in the back of the room gives a little glow, and reduces just how horrible staring at a computer screen will be for me, while still giving my room a necessary darkness.

Alan is fine. He’s changed since he went to college and made new friends. The friends are dicks. The narrator hates these new friends, who have replaced him. He’s come down here because it means keeping part of his relationship with Alan.

But Alan’s gone deeper into the cave than he could go. He had a breakdown and stayed. He complains for several paragraphs (which will probably get truncated in editing) about the influence of these friends and how stupid spelunking is in a world of airplanes and fast food. We’ve evolved.

He worries. He’s got good reason. He calls for Alan. I call for Alan, out loud. Every time he says something, I say it. He gets no replies; neither do I.

His thoughts accelerate. I read a few. I read a few more. Soon I’m reading out loud before my fingers have typed the words. When I don’t have the words for a line or a connection, I type what needs to happen in capital bold letters rather than stop to think it over. I can fill the gaps later. Right now he’s going back and forth, no sun light, no responses, and is the cave changing? Did he turn left or right after the slope? He’s bleeding from two places and then there’s…

It’s 2,500 words. At a certain point, the narrator gushed. 2,500 words is short on the “short story” scale, but I know this gushed because my heart is racing. I know a lot of the prose needs polishing. It’s redundant, whiny, and not enough of it pushes the story forward. But I bothered myself.

That’s how I did it, if you’re interested. Excuse me while I go turn the lights back on.

Bathroom Monologue: The Original Story of Hansel and Gretel

"The story of Hansel and Gretel originally began with a famine. Their mother, knowing there was not enough food to feed her children, instructed her husband to lead the children into the woods and abandon them. Their father, who was supporting the family on his income, told her that she never cooked, was lousy in bed, and that the kids were the only ones who pretended to be happy when he got home, so if anyone was getting lost in the woods, it was her. The mother was seen a few years later, working the cash register at a cannibal bakery in the woods or something. The end."

Bathroom Monologue: Apples for Science

“If Satan can do this, so can I,” Jesus muttered, struggling into the snakeskin. It was a lovely skin; if anyone looked closely they would see its diamondback pattern was actually a series of slanted crosses. No one did look closely, though, because he was unknowable to look at it. It was part of the job.

When he finished putting it on, the Jesus-snake slithered over to a lonely apple tree. Careful not to disturb the daydreaming mathematician below it, the Jesus-snake climbed up the trunk. He ascended to an overhanging limb, flicking his tongue at the apples not so much to smell which one was right (he was omniscient; he knew exactly which apple to drop), as he did out of a sense of theatre.

There was a ripe red one just above the mathematician’s head. The Jesus-snake reached down and bit its stem. It broke quietly, and the fruit fell freely.

An instant later, Isaac Newton cried in pain. He whirled on the offending apple, dumbly furious for a moment. Then he picked it up. Then he looked up. He didn’t see the serpent because he was looking for something else that was invisible. His eyes went frantic and he gestured with his hands, moving a fist in relation to the apple and the ground.

The Jesus-snake slithered out of the tree and into the air, flying upwards. Satan appeared moments later. He was in the guise of a certain species of eagle that eats snakes.

“You know, Newton was never hit by an apple,” he said. “That story isn’t real.”

The Jesus-snake disregarded both his form and his criticism.

“Neither is this one.”

He disappeared in a cloud of realism. The Satan-eagle circled for a while, perplexed. He sniffed and used the angelic sense, utterly unable to tell where his nemesis had gone.

Meanwhile, in another timeline that never happened, a suspicious looking handyman entered Archimedes’s house and tinkered with the bathtub.

"Counting With George" at On The Wing

Today's story is "Counting with George," which is up over at On The Wing. On The Wing is the non-fiction arm of Full Of Crow. They primarily publish opinion pieces, though they are open to all non-fiction.

"Counting With George" follows my attempt to get a price estimate for an MRI. It's dedicated to George, quite possibly the most helpful person I've ever met at any hospital in my life.

You can read John Wiswell's "Counting with George" at On The Wing. You can reach On The Wing by clicking on this text.

Bathroom Monologue: Michael Solender wants a Bathroom Monologue about my pinkies

I type with four fingers. The forefingers to most of the work, with the middle fingers intruding at the IKM and EDC borders – they are the guards of East and West Europe, you might say, and what better to serve along the Berlin Wall than middle fingers? The thumbs do their best to patrol the south, reliably punching the spacebar and some of the ZXCVBNM,./ keys, not really knowing what they’re doing. To follow an even less comfortable strain of the mid-20th century Europe analogy, the thumbs just follow orders. Command comes from the forefingers, which sometimes become preoccupied up north and don’t wish to make the long journey. The pinky fingers do the lightest work, with the pinkies sometimes hitting Caps Lock or holding shift – the doormen, or perhaps the lighthouse keepers on the shores of this typographical continent. I’m inclined to attack the pinky for its laziness, but no finger so exudes largess as the ring finger. I don’t wear rings and have only once seen a ring finger strike a key – a few months ago, when I was sorely tired, it reached over and struck Enter for me. It was not out of instinct; the ring finger is the entourage, the trophy wife of my typography, existing to make the pinky feel productive and to keep one side of the middle finger warm. If you surgically removed these things, replacing the ring finger to the middle finger’s spot, it would do more work, but not because of optimal placement – no, I suspect it would do more work to save face in front of the forefinger. The middle finger is a buffer between them, and thus, really, an enabler caught in central Germany.

Bathroom Monologue: The Living Curse

“I’m not God. I will not say I am. Except for the right woman, but you are most certainly not her.

“I am a curse. Retired.

“Not that curses call themselves ‘retired.’ The proper term might be ‘executed.’ I don’t know for certain because other curses don’t talk. A fleshy thing like you lives and dies. A curse is more like a computer process; once executed, it isn’t dead. It’s merely happened. What to do once they’ve happened is something other curses have a hard time reconciling. I didn’t, but I can only speak for my own experience.

“See, a long time ago God took interest in this one planet. Lots of life. Humans. Gnomes. Vampires. Biological angels. Walking shrubbery. The planet was a total overachiever in the intelligent-life department. The Big Guy was interested, which means saving them in ways they’re completely oblivious to, and when they grow hair and get interested in girls, laying down a few rules. The Big Guy essentially said: go nuts, do whatever you want, just don’t cross these three bloodlines.

“Well everyone pays attention to what The Big Guy wants when they’ve got no food or clothing. But give them an iPhone and unemployment checks, and holy crap they get cocky. We’re not talking vampires biting humans out of need, either. We’re talking walking shrubbery fucking angels from 9 to 5 and hoping for a raise. They mastered this planet, could fission water and fuse thin air. Conquered the genome and the ether. Brought peace between angels and vampires, walking shrubs and gardeners.

“Because they’d run out of useful things to do, they proposed genetic art. Bat wings on werewolves? Humans with no defects? This was boring. They wanted to fuse all the gene strings and make a life form that was All of the Above. Pan-Planetary Life. Humans, lycans and angels had similar stuffing, and for the more difficult things, they used nanomachines to force the organs to cooperate. They invented an industry just to make this one life form work. Sixty years of high-tech social masturbation before it opened its eyes.

“Before I opened my eyes. Because The Big Guy has got the best sense of humor. He lays a law down not to cross these bloodlines, and then you do? Why, He makes that new life form the host of the curse.

“The moment I opened my eyes, the ground split open and swallowed the researchers. I flew around the heavens and made it rain blood. Suddenly everybody’s praying. Some are praying to the government, but unfortunately ballistic missiles can’t shoot down destiny. They dropped hydrogen bombs on me when I was in their most populated city. I didn’t let the bombs detonate until I tracked down the bunker of world leaders, though.

“Left the world a burning cinder. I floated in space between the black planet and its white moon, thinking. Funny thing, thinking. Curses aren’t supposed to think.

“I was executed. Curse: done. No more to do. The planet was over, no way were those bloodlines getting crossed now that all liquid had ceased to be. I could have ceased to be. And that’s the wonderful thing about God. I got the choice. Curse, want to stop? Want to blink out of existence? Or would you like to take the endless powers those idiots bonded into one body, and go on a cross-galactic skiing trip? Ultimate pension package: can’t die, planet-breaking power, and the holy word is you can do whatever you want. Make yourself comfortable. No soul! No afterlife! Can’t die, since you’re not alive. The body is a toy, a shoe you can kick off whenever. You’re just a curse, with panache.

“As far as I’m concerned, all life in the universe is recess. I’ve had eons to embrace my ability. Wrap twelve dimensions around my little finger. But I am not God. I’m just eating on His dime.”

Bathroom Monologue: Work the Curse

An audio edition of "Work the Curse" is available. To listen, click the triangle. To download the MP3, click this text.

I thought about it while you were sleeping. You can’t remember our first life? I can’t either. All these lives we’ve led are a haze. We keep being reborn, falling in love, and remembering everything too late to save each other. They say he’s trapped us in tragedy. They say we’re always murdered in front of each other, but I don’t remember. Do you?

We’ve died in sorrow hundreds times, and we’ll do it thousands more. We’ve never been able to break the curse – but now, I think we can beat it. I watched you sleep last night, and remembered you dozing on my shoulder in a dozen other lifetimes. I couldn’t help but touch your hair and think: part of this is the best thing that could ever happen to me. Meeting you a hundred more times? If we love for a year each life, we’ll outlast every marriage in history. And when I die? I know I'll see you again. I don't want you to suffer, but the end comes to everyone. If not in this Great War, then in sickness or old age.

He wants us to dread this. In that monster’s mind this was going to be eternal heartbreak, but this is an eternity of chances. We'll live again, and again. From this life on, we'll remember each other, but like any good couple, we'll remember selectively. In five lifetimes we'll concentrate on remembering the reunions. In ten we'll remember all the worlds we've shared. In twenty we'll hunt down the lineages of the families we started, see our great grandchildren's work, and fill our souls with it. With every lifetime we'll repeat that we only die together, not how. Not murder. Not horror. In thirty, or fifty, or eighty lifetimes, we'll only have a vague idea that each life is going to end. In a hundred lifetimes we’ll only remember this as a miracle that keeps bringing us back together. Maybe we can't break the curse, but if we live each time without fear of what's coming, it can't win.